5 Ways Your High School Athletic Department Should Be Using Twitter

5 Ways Your High School Athletic Department Should Be Using Twitter

5 Ways Your High School Athletic Department Should Be Using Twitter2015-11-232015-11-23https://schools.hometeammarketing.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/2015/11/htm_ss_full_350_v4.pngHTM School Solutionshttps://schools.hometeammarketing.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/2015/11/twitter_field_700_v2.jpg200px200px

Social media has taken the sports world by storm at the professional and collegiate level. More and more focus has been placed on branding organizations and institutions through social media channels. This blog post highlights high school athletic directors across the country who are laying the groundwork for success on social media and the types of posts that are making them stand out.

#1. Promote Ticket Sales For Events

Holy Name High School (Parma Heights, OH) set the bar high with this tweet promoting ticket sales for their playoff game. Although including a graphic is not always easy or possible, it does draw more attention to the tweet. Twitter has recently claimed that tweets with imagery get 313% more engagement. The graphic that they used included their logo overlapping onto whitespace outside of the photo which gave this tweet a more native feel in the timeline.

Holy Name’s tweet also directed followers to their website for more information on tickets for the game (i.e. prices, when to purchase, how to purchase, etc.). With high school online ticketing emerging and more capabilities on the horizon for purchasing items directly from your timeline, Twitter is an important channel to use to promote ticket sales.

#2. Announce Details For Upcoming Games

Schools across the country have found success in providing their followers information regarding upcoming games. The most important part of this type of tweet is to get the information out there. The fun part is getting creative with how you craft the message.

Consistency is evident again in the graphics that Saint John Bosco High School (Bellflower, CA) creates for their upcoming games. The graphics look clean and professional, but can be created pretty easily if a graphic designer can create a user-friendly template.
These two graphics also have a subtle Nike brand callout in the bottom right corner, which matches up with the logo on their jerseys.

#3. Provide Followers With Live Scoring & Updates During Events

Gilmour Academy (Gates Mills, OH) provides their followers with game updates that rival those of professional sports Twitter accounts. Athletic Director, Jeff Walrich, has established himself amongst the best in the business when it comes to sports social media or #SMSports.

Below are just a few examples of his live tweets. Animated GIFs, graphics, and video give your followers an in-venue feel:

Don’t forget about simple text updates! Live scoring for high school games is not always available through different media sources. Students, parents and fans of your teams will appreciate getting periodic updates during the action:

Chardon High School (Chardon, OH) has a local insurance agent acknowledge a student-athlete on a weekly basis as player-of-the-week. This is a valuable piece of sponsorship inventory for the insurance agent, offering exposure to not only the high school’s followers, but through retweets and other engagements it has the potential to touch many other Twitter users in the community.

A big thank you to our newest sponsor, Ice Pro Florida! Thanks for supporting Braden River High School athletics! pic.twitter.com/4tvAS5Hnj0

The Braden River Pirates (Bradenton, FL) booster club consistently posts tweets, inclusive of the sponsor’s logo, thanking their supporters. Brush High School (Lyndhurst, OH) also does a terrific job of thanking their sponsors via Twitter. The photo in the above tweet brings their local partnership with an auto dealer full circle, as it shows their branding right in the middle of the football game action! The Brush Arcs also do a great job of promoting their advertising inventory to local businesses in their community through Twitter. The tweet below directs potential sponsors to a website explaining all advertising options at their school.

Click here to find out more about how your school can advertise using a similar website.

#5. Highlight Student-Athlete Achievements

Student-athlete success is what high school athletics is all about and why many of us work in this industry. National Signing Day for fall sports provided outstanding examples of athletic departments showcasing the success of their student-athletes on Twitter.